As discussed by UF’s Oumar Ba in this contribution to the Africa is a Country blog, South Africa announced it was withdrawing from the International Criminal Court on Friday October 21st. Prior to that announcement, Burundi’s Parliament voted to leave the ICC on October 12th, making it the first country to ever make such an announcement. After Burundi and South Africa’s announcements, on October 26th Gambia has now followed suit.
As Ba reports, the main issue from the point of view of African leaders is that the ICC appears solely concerned with the investigation of Africans (with the one exception of a recent ICC investigation of war crimes committed in Georgia in 2008), though it is also true that many of these investigations actually came at the request of African states. Gambia’s recent statement on why it was leaving the ICC may have been the boldest (i.e. public officials have referred to the ICC as the International Caucasian Court and President Jammeh asked the court to “investigate the European Union over the deaths of thousands of African migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean” (Quartz, 2016)), the departure of regional heavyweight South Africa represents a greater ideological blow to the court’s international standing and power.
Ba points out that South Africa’s leaving the ICC might not be so surprising in retrospect, given the country’s refusal to arrest President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan at the Court’s request in June 2015, but that it also may have been an illegal move domestically as the executive branch issued the announcement without allowing Parliament to vote on the issue. Moving forward, he suggests we keep our eyes on Kenya, Uganda, and Namibia which maybe the next states to jump off the ICC ship.